I’m curious to see what happens next. I’ll keep writing plays, but I might need to hone my skills as a handyman just in case this whole theater thing doesn’t pan out.
drama
Theater Commentary: “Skeleton Crew” — Not With the Union
To my surprise, the auto union was written out of the picture from the start, as if dramatist Dominique Morisseau saw it as an embarrassment.
Fuse Theater Review: “Informed Consent” — Science, Ethics, and Racing Against the Clock
Playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer has done a marvelous job of blending weighty ideas into a very human context.
Film Review: “Adult Beginners” — Learning the Same Old Lessons
The comedy-tinged-with-drama touches on themes tackled by a bunch of recent indie movies that center on characters in their thirties and forties who feel like imposters in the world of adults.
Fuse Theater Feature: Enter Israeli Stage
Exciting things are happening in Israeli writing, and it is garnering considerable attention in Europe. But what about theater in Israel? Israeli Stage offers the curious a chance to see what is happening.
Fuse Theater Review: Shakespeare in Paris
The production is set in France of the 1920s and artfully combines evocations of both Paris and the Forest of Arden: The city of lights is represented by miniature versions of famous landmarks: the Arc de Triomphe; Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower — that twinkle at night and serve as props as well as set.
Book Review: An Authoritative Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama
Minor translation issues aside, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama‘s excellent selection, colloquial and stage-friendly translations, and illuminating introduction undoubtedly make the volume the authoritative choice in teaching and reading modern Chinese drama for the foreseeable future. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama. Edited and with an introduction by Xiaomei Chen. Columbia University […]
Fuse Theater Review: The Apple Pie Beauty of “reasons to be pretty”
Now that dramatist Neil LaBute’s scripts are being produced on Broadway he has fanned the earlier whiffs of amorality in his work away. The obscene language and provocative hooks remain, but those are not a bar to popular success (think of David Mamet).
Theater Review: Notes on Shakespeare as a Bare Bard
Two recent productions of Shakespeare, one a heralded London staging at the Donmar Warehous heading to New York in April, the other an Actors’ Shakespeare Project presentation in Davis Square, provide examples of the strengths and weaknesses of tackling the Bard without frills.
Fuse Theater Review: An Over-the-Top “Terminus”
As long as the wizardly spell of dramatist Mark O’Rowe’s creative versification stays strong, Terminus holds you firmly in its slip-slimy grip. The nimble verse is rappy and snappy, a sort of slangy, obscene, sing-song rhyme (with some breath-taking vocal syncopation) that accentuates rather than undercuts the dark doings of the play, at least for […]